Why Employers Don’t Respond to Job Applications

How often have you wondered why employers don’t respond to job applications? You read through the job posting. Twice. Your skills and work experience are a perfect match for the responsibilities of the position you’re applying for. You take the time to carefully craft job applications that rivals any Academy Award–winning speeches. You follow the submission process down to the last detail. You hit send and you wait.

And wait.

But you never hear back from the company you applied for. Sadly, not responding to job applications has become a growing trend among companies. According to a CareerBuilder survey, 25 percent of those surveyed said that they never received an acknowledgment after submitting job applications, or worse, were not informed about the hiring manager’s decision after an interview. And to add insult to injury, a staggering 75 percent of participants claimed that they hadn’t heard back from at least one employer in the past year.

Is it simply that employers are rude, or is there something bigger at play here? We decided to find out, straight from the hiring managers’ mouths.

We asked them why employers don’t respond to job applications. Here’s what they had to say—anonymously, of course.

Providing Feedback Has Legal and Liability Implications

“I agree that it would be beneficial for a candidate to get feedback from potential employers,” said one former hiring manager. “But it is rare for someone being interviewed to receive specific feedback on how they did because of the legal implications involved and the potential liability the person sharing the information might incur.”

Candidates Don’t Always Commit “Obvious” Mistakes

“Hiring is often subjective,” he continued. “Candidate A was more likable than Candidate B, Candidate B answered questions with better examples than Candidate C, and so on. It is often not that a candidate not hired committed an obvious mistake—perhaps a lot of little ones. It is that another person did better, and since the candidate desiring feedback wasn’t part of the other candidate’s interview, it makes it difficult to provide feedback without seeming arbitrary.”

Individual Hiring Managers Often Need Team Approval

Said another hiring manager: “Hiring is often a team sport, meaning that I might like a candidate, but the decision of the team is a different candidate. This, too, will complicate the feedback to a candidate.”

Employers Prefer Hiring Someone They Know or Who Comes Recommended

Another hiring manager had this to say: “The real reason that people do not reply to applicants is the ‘general applicants’ are likely coming from the third or fourth tier quality of the job leads I get. The best people to hire are ones I have worked with before, and the second best are those who are recommended by people I know and respect. And the third tier are people I may meet at networking events.”

The general consensus from the hiring managers we interviewed was that they don’t respond to the majority of the job applications they receive because of the job applications—and the candidates themselves. From not reading the job posting correctly and submitting inaccurate info, to applying for a position that they are not nearly qualified for, many hiring managers opt to directly delete those applications since they feel that the job seeker didn’t take the time to accurately assess his skills and apply for the job properly.

Recruiters May Be Strapped for Time

Said this hiring manager: “Many hiring managers don’t follow up because there’s simply not enough time. For each job that we post, there may be hundreds of job applications. Answering each and every one of those would be a full-time job in and of itself.”

Hiring Decisions Are Made Based on Intangibles

And an (honest) hiring manager added this: “One reason I wouldn’t get back to someone is if I had to tell them something that they couldn’t ‘fix,’ such as their personality. If I didn’t like them, I’m not going to respond back. You don’t want to offend the person—or argue with him—so you stay quiet.”

What Do Employers Recommend If You Don’t Hear Back?

So let’s say that you’re an amiable person with the skills and experience you need for a position—but you still don’t hear back. What should you do? Well, one recruiter suggested creating a post-interview checklist, where the candidate self-assesses how she did in the critical areas of the interview. You would need to develop a list of all of the aspects that are part of the job interviews (such as quality of examples given, amount of research done that proved relevant, attire, rapport built with the interviewer, etc.). While this requires you to be objective, this might be the best way for you to determine (in lieu of speaking with the actual hiring manager) just how well you did—and what you can do better next time.

Readers, have you sent in well-crafted job applications and not heard back? How do you feel about what the hiring managers had to say? Let us know your thoughts in the comments section below!

276 Comments

Victoria said :October 09, 2013 at 8:13 am

What I am most curious about is how a recruiter deciphers who is the “better” candidate (in the pre-interview phase) when each has similar strengths that make them qualified for the job. You don’t get “personality” from reading a resume, so this is the great mystery that I think most job seekers want to solve.

As a recruiter for 12+ years hopefully I can shed some light. I received dozens if not over a hundred resumes for each job posted in the past few years. I have to scan for the basic qualifications. Then, is there something on the resume that stands out, previous experience in same or similiar industry, length of employment, are there large gaps that are not explained etc. Is the candidate somewhat local (withing 40 miles of job). Many times it is what the article says, even before being selected for the interview, who looks more solid on paper out of the stack of resumes. (Tip, make the resume concise and easy to read – use bullets. The recruiter has 1 minute to look at your resume and determine if you go into the consider stack or no thank you stack. Paragraph style resumes always go in the no thank you stack. Resume is like a business card, I need to know what is important in 1 minute or less. The interview is when you expand on the depth of your experience). Hope this helps anyone out there that reads it.

Thank you Cliff for your most needed and appreciated honest feedback. Now I know why it took me close to one year to get a job with the U.S. Post Office after applying for over 1000 suitable employment positions. My resume is two pages, one page too long and too wordy. I have the paragraph version of my resume and not the more precise and easier on the eye to read bullet type. I like your suggestion of a business card type of resume that the hiring manager can read within one minute and save more of the details for the interview. I honestly did not know that most hiring managers put my type of resume in the no thank you stack and not in the consider stack. I thank you again Cliff and will edit my resume to have bullets and not paragraphs. I do have a question for you Cliff. My cover letters seem to be too wordy, and they also have a combination of paragraphs and bullets. Is it cover letter etiquette to have bullets or just the more common three paragraphs? Joseph! :0) >

> Thank you, Cliff. Your information is very helpful. As most of us are proud of our accomplishments, we do tend to write more “paragraph style” resumes. Last year, I got sick of sending out over and over again and receiving no response. I flashed on how Employers/Recruiters initially really just want to see what I can do, not how good I do it or why I’m the best for it. I changed my format from “chronological” to one page of the basics with plenty of white space. While I haven’t found a job yet, I have gotten several interviews using that resume format. :)

> That’s good information, but what about these online applications that are pages and pages long? Who’s looking at them? Seems to me that if HR doesn’t have time to read a two page resume they wouldn’t have time to review the online application. Automation is not always a good thing for employers or job seekers. Many perfect matches are missed because of automated screening. Employers are missing out on good employees because of it. I’m in IT and technology is a wonderful thing, but in this application, it doesn’t come close to a real person talking to another real person to learn their competencies, get a feel for what type of person they are and what kind of employee they may be.

> That’s good information, but what about these online applications that are pages and pages long? Who’s looking at them? Seems to me that if HR doesn’t have time to read a two page resume they wouldn’t have time to review the online application. Automation is not always a good thing for employers or job seekers. Employers are missing out on good employees because of it. I’m in IT and technology is a wonderful thing, but in this particular application, it doesn’t come close to a real person talking to another real person to learn their competencies, get a feel for what type of person they are and what kind of employee they may be.

> How do you explain a large gap when the employers don’t tell you why they won’t hire you? I have been unemployed for a long time. I can only speculate that my 17 years of experience doesn’t matter because I don’t have a Bachelor’s degree in my field. Or, maybe I have too much experience that causes employers to assume I will want too much pay.

From my experience if your resume doesn’t have the exact words/phrase the screening software has been programmed to flag then your resume runs through the screening process and straight into the virtual recycle bin. A human doesn’t even see it. If applicant A has the exact wording and you only have a partial then applicant A will get flagged and your resume will not. For example, if the employer wanted to see resumes with Microsoft Excel as a skill set and your resume indicated Excel then depending on how the employer programmed the software would depend on how resumes were flagged. If they were specific to include the word Microsoft then your resume would not get selected.
I know…..it’s really becoming more and more like playing the slots. Sometimes you win and sometimes you don’t but for the most part you don’t. It’s frustrating.

> Yes, they need to be replaced immediately and completely. At least a computer doesn’t look down on unemployed people like these arrogant hiring managers and computers don’t think cronyism is a great hiring strategy.

I have been qualified for over 100 jobs and I usually do not hear back anything. It is frustrating. Because if a manager called me back to tell me what was wrong with my interview, I would just listen and thank him/her. I don’t understand their thinking.

I have made a career out of not hearing back from employers. I think the responses to your article are empty excuses. We are all busy, but humans have the choice to be amiable or just downright mean. I think hiring managers are just mean girls who weren’t hugged enough as children. Yet they cry that there aren’t enough qualified applicants. The system is broken, for both hiring managers and job seekers.

@Victoria: A lot of times that just comes down to logistics. Sometimes when hiring you’ll end up with a stack of several hundred candidates that you might like, so you grab ten from the stack and call them for interviews. Which ten will depend on different things. You might have met one, several may have been recommended by employees; maybe one of them has been persistent about checking in.

Other times you might just have a very small number of applicants that aren’t, well, terrible; so you call those that aren’t terrible for interviews.

There’s, unfortunately, no formula here. A lot of it boils down to things that the job seeker has naught to do with.

This doesn’t address why an employer can’t even respond with an acknowledgment the resume was even received! Also, if I have taken the time, resources, energy and civlity to come in for an interview, I fully expect that anyone interviewing me (let alone interviewing me multiple times) has the common decency to let me know of any decision regarding the position no matter how political or uncomfortable. I have, in fact, turned down a job before because the company and hiring management displayed such a monstrous lack of good manners and a clear respect for my time and value as a team member.

I am a wife and mom who works 70 hours a week in HR with little to no help in my dept. I do way more than recruiting. Do you seriously think I am going to spend another 10 hours a week “acknowledging” resumes and unsolicited applications of people who aren’t remotely qualified for a position we may or may not have open? Sorry, I already spend enough time away from my family. If you are qualified ( in our subjective opinion), we will call or email you. If not, keep looking. Do NOT hound us to death – it will not help you. Sorry, it sounds harsh but that’s the reality of it; we do not have time to respond to every submission. Don’t blame us; blame the companies we work for who don’t value HR as a dept worth staffing adequately because we don’t generate profits. I do agree that if you’ve gone to an interview, you deserve to at least find out officially if the position has been filled. That is rude.

And would it kill you to just say “Not hired”? Just make a stock letter, and reply to those you didn’t hire using mass email. If you’re so strapped for time that you can’t hit a button, then you’re a shit manager. And if it’s that you don’t KNOW how to set it up like that, you shouldn’t be in the HR department in the first place.

> I sincerely doubt it would take 10 hours to acknowledge receipt of applicants’ materials. How about a mass e-mail, with all applicants’ addresses listed in the BCC field? There is nothing worse than wondering if there was an e-mail glitch–and that your materials never made it to their destination or that the overworked HR rep may have overlooked it since her job is so terribly demanding without a moment’s rest. I agree with Sarah.

> Bad attitude! That’s what you signed up for. Part of your job is to behave as a professional. That necessarily requires you to spend 5 minutes (and that’s all it would take) to send a mass automated response one day each week, addressed to all applicants who applied the week prior. You’re the type of HR person that everyone detests. If you don’t like your job, you should find another one. If you have obligations at home that take precedence, you should stay home and attend to your obligations. But, don’t take your frustrations out on applicants who are spending their time applying to your company. Also, if you can’t do your job correctly because you are understaffed, you should discuss the issue with your immediate supervisor – rather than taking it out on applicants. So unprofessional!

> I teach university/college-level mathematics and I am always amazed at the number of students who boast about getting jobs for which they weren’t qualified. Apparently, “being qualified” is subjective.

I believe that if the recruiters were truly honest, they are too scared to provide feedback. Just let a candidate know they are not being considered, or that the position has been filled. The worst feeling is knowing you are qualified to do a particular job, you spend time to craft your resume and cover letter to illustrate that fact and then, after time has passed, you see the job reposted. Usually makes me think that the recruiter did not take the time to read all of the applications. There are a lot of people out there who cannot, or will not, do their jobs making decisions about who to hire and fire.

In a perfect world, we’d get feedback; I know in reality, it’s not going to happen. There’s no reason they can’t send a form letter via email (everyone must have one to apply these days) that they decided on someone else. That’s not great, but at least I know they got my submission! Even getting that is rare these days.

> How is inability to compose an appropriate reply, or just being busy, an adequate excuse for the discourtesy of failing to notify applicants that a position has been filled? If HR people want to be considered professionals, then they should act like professionals. Isn’t part of the job dealing with applicants? Keep in mind rudeness gives a company a bad name, although everyone’s so desperate these days maybe that doesn’t matter.

I’ve been self-employed for the past 20 years, so the job-hunting landscape has changed since the last time I was sending out resumes. But whether times have changed or not, I still think it’s really rude not to respond after receiving an application from a qualified person. It takes very little time, costs nothing.

> I don’t always get a response but I do get some. They are all automated so no time is needed to compose an answer. Just hit the button and its gone. Maybe 5 seconds at most.
Any company can do the automated answer and that answer is better than none. At least you know they received the resume.

I personally think that there are a lot of lazy out of touch people in HR departments.I know sometimes there not even in their office. I would also differ on the opinion of going on referrals or people they already know? So what you end up with is an office cilque where people already know each other .Why bother posting jobs if your just basing jobs on persona then no IT jobs would be filled,because the people who usually work IT are not necessarily people oriented. Maybe these hiring managers have just solved a mystery as to why there are so many unfilled jobs .The HR people don’t have the right personality to fill them or they are on vacation or they take Friday off.

Victoria, you can get personality from a resume, but most resumes don’t have it. I think the ones that stand out are the ones where you can hear some of that personality and I’ve struggled to make mine have that personality. I don’t think it does, however. Regardless, you bring up a good point: in a general pool of applicants how is it decided my app get placed in the slush pile while yours goes through? I think much of it is personality, intuition and just plain cosmic alignment. I hate to think that, but I believe it to be true. I’d much rather feel that I have some control over my own fate, don’t you?

I,ve tried for two years to find a job,i haven,t had one reply back. I think this resume thing is stupid, We should go back to the old ways of getting a job. The person to person application is the best. Thank you MP.

> You may want to watch your typing. I noticed some very odd punctuation in your comment. Not knowing if you just didn’t care since it is a comment thread, or if all your writing ends up like this, I felt someone should say something. If your applications have this issue no one is going to read them. They would get tossed.

I’m not sure why a hiring manager would bother post a job if he only wants to hire people he knows, people recommended to him, or people he meets at a networking event. Why not just do himself and the job seekers a favor and not post?

I’d like to think that if someone asks a seeker to take the time to tailor their reply to the request, that the manager is sincere and earnest in his desire to take that application seriously.

Who is hiring the arbitrary hiring manager? Is anyone paying attention to the fact that they aren’t getting a very big bang for their HR bucks when a manager puts out a post that he never intends to make good on?

I’d rather compete for a real job than waste my time filling someone’s slush pile. It makes online boards a third tier option. Sounds like there is a new opportunity for technologists who can bridge the gap.

That is an easy one to answer. Employers are not so much worried about education, experience, and skills as they are about personal character traits. Bottomline: They view it in the same vein as deciding who they want to marry. Any person who has worked on a large project knows that it is the all too human foibles exposed in the plays of William Shakespeare that causes whole projects to shatter and fail. Hiring managers know this and prefer friends to recommend someone because they are a trusted character reference. In my last job, I asked my boss about this subject and she said, “I NEVER hire someone I do not know who just sends in a resume and cover letter. Way too risky. I prefer to hire people I already know or a person who comes highly recommended by a trusted friend or colleague.”

The HR/hiring manager in the comments above who said that people who send in cold resumes are 4th and 5th tier employees is full of crap. He would never work for me at my organization. That has not been my experience at all.

All of these excuses are just that – excuses. Put technology to work and have the courtesy to use automated messages to acknowledge receipt of applications. Use another automated message to thank candidates for interviewing and to relay next steps (e.g. Proceed to next step, end of process).

While I understand that numerous resumes are received for each job posting, it is unprofessional not to acknowledge receipt of a resume especially since they are now being sent electronically the majority of the time. As an applicant I am okay with never receiving an interview, but if I always wonder if my resume went into the junk mail folder when responding directly to an email address. A simple canned message of receipt would suffice.

To not respond back to someone after an interview to let them know a different candidate was chosen is inexcusable. There is no “liability implication” in simply stating that someone else was chosen. I am not asking for feedback, just common courtesy. In this situation I have called or emailed the interviewer to find out if the position has been filled.

Employers need to realize that recessions and the upper hand do not last forever. Bad impressions made now can cost them great candidates in the future.

Having been on the hiring and recruiting side of the desk, I don’t expect a reply or feedback from an application. And I also understand the difficulty of not having a real critique to offer, and feeling like “thanks, but no thanks” isn’t worthy of correspondence (for time and legal reasons). Lately, I’ve received some fabulous rejection notices; sans a true critique, a well written form letter continues to build upon the businesses public image.

What I have difficulty tolerating is a hiring manager confirming a window for their decision during the final round of interviews, then not closing the loop. In larger companies it’s easy as an applicant to check on the status of things. But when you know it’s a smaller office and a single hire position, it’s extremely difficult for an applicant walk the line between patient (or uninterested) and pushy (or overly-eager).
However, I also consider this a sign that I wouldn’t enjoy working for the business: poor communication, lack of follow through, broken commitments, uncertainty…

Everyone has to develop their own method of coping with potential radio silence and rejection. “Try again and fail better,” works for me.

I once helped a hiring manager sift through applications and resumes for a position our company posted. I couldn’t believe the sheer numbers of applicants that did not even remotely meet the specified requirements for the position and submitted for it anyway. After the first 20 or so, one can’t help but get irritated and wonder if they even read the description under the job title. The first thing we did was look at the experience, education, and other sections to see if the requirements were listed. If they weren’t, we didn’t go any farther. They were automatically deleted without a second thought. Then out of those that did at least meet the requirements, there were a large number of very poorly written and haphazardly laid out resumes. It was astounding to us that individuals actually felt comfortable sending resumes with red, pink, yellow, script, and other difficult to see or read fonts to a prospective employer. It honestly puts a hiring manager off instantly if they have to strain to read your resume and it gives the exact opposite first impression than most candidates want to make on a potential employer. Lastly: TYPOS. It’s so important to have someone else proofread your resume and application before sending them off. Not everything is caught by spell check. For example, omitted or repeated words, using their instead of there, etc.

With all this being said; however, no one is immune. I’ve applied for positions previously and never received an acknowledgement of any kind. It’s not difficult for the person receiving the resumes/applications to set up an auto responder email to be sent to each applicant to acknowledge receipt of their info and thanking them for applying. I’ve even seen some lately that go so far as to thank an applicant and then state, “Due to the popularity of this position and its high response rate, please be aware that it could take several weeks for us to go through all of the submissions to find the most qualified candidates…”

How hard is it to draft a generic response to someone letting them know they didn’t get the job because you chose another candidate for the position and thank you for your interest in our company or firm.

I think it’s poor that every employer thought it best not to respond to someone that wasn’t getting the job because they didn’t want to hurt their feelings and were afraid to be honest with them. How old are you? I find it hard to believe they can actually manage people let alone make a decision to hire someone.

An argument very real but very varied. Certainly strongly influenced by the economic reality of the territory and by the company itself. Be offered to a company is to undergo analysis of other people. Maybe before you do have to study the company to which you submit. But despite all this, there will be many circumstances that contribute to say yes or no to the offer. Human experience gained can along with specific training and general knowledge do clarity and understanding what to do. One thing is certain, that the only complete the curriculum is not the only key to accede to the real world of work.